It’s not all paradise at La Folie, Michael Wright’s new home in France and that’s why I so enjoyed his first book, C’est la Folie. Almost alarmed at his own daring in giving up everything for a home in France, Michael Wright chronicles his ups and many downs in his new home. I was therefore ready to catch up with the what happened next in Je T’Aime à la Folie - and now it is love that is the new passion – that and getting to fly a Spitfire. Both cherished dreams are pursued with intensity and I’ll leave you to discover this gem of a French memoir and to see if dreams do come true.
Having spent three years alone in France, doing his best to survive in a foreign land, and failing miserably to woo a dishy French copine, Michael Wright feels he's perhaps reached a near Zen-like state of contentment. He has everything he ever wanted - his new life as a paysanne, his cat, the chickens and the sheep, his French neighbours and friends, his piano, his aeroplane - perhaps he should call un arrete to his occasionaly over-eager search for a woman to complete his life. But barely a week after coming to this momentous decision, an email from an old school friend re-introduces him to Alice - a paid-up urban girl with an expensive shoe habit and deep-rooted mistrust of the countryside, let alone the French countryside. And Alice works - conveniently - on the other side of the Atlantic, in Baltimore, USA.
But love knows no bounds and so begins an unlikely romance, conducted across two continents, as Michael the rustic hermit struggles to unlearn his lessons in living alone and contemplates the prospect of sharing his French life (not to mention his aeroplane) with someone else...
Born in Surrey in 1966, Michael Wright enjoyed an unfashionably happy education at Windlesham House and Sherborne and graduated from Edinburgh University with a degree in English Literature. He spent several years working as a theatre critic, arts columnist and literary diarist in London whilst wondering what to do when he grew up. The answer turned out to lie in rural France, where he now lives.
